“Oh, Eric! Please! Don’t send me away!”
He swept her up into his arms and redeposited her upon the bed. He looked into the tearful liquid emerald of her eyes, and for the life of him, he wanted to recant.
His heart hardened. Cameron Hall could have burned to the ground. She had gone with Tarryton. By her own admission, she had gone with the man. More than anything in the world, he wanted to believe that she loved him. He wanted to believe her innocent.
But he could not trust her. He had done so before, and he had been betrayed. Time and time again she had betrayed him. Other lives were at stake.
He smiled, then bent down and kissed her lips. He had to leave, but he could not resist. He cupped her breast with his fingers and felt the anguish of longing burst upon him. He kissed her long and slowly, and stroked her flesh as if he could memorize with his hands as well as his mind.
Then he rose and gazed down upon her ruefully. “Au revoir, my love.”
He turned and walked to the door. She was on her feet again, flying after him. “Eric!”
He closed the door. He heard the thud of her hands against it and then he heard her curses. He stiffened as he listened to the words upon her lips. Then he heard her fall against the door. And he heard the anguish of her tears.
He squared his shoulders and wondered how he would bear it, knowing that she was in France. At least she would be far away from Tarryton. And she would be safe. Bisset would see to that. He leaned against the wall in anguish.
He straightened at last, breathing deeply. Then he walked down the hallway, down the long portrait gallery. He paused, looking up at his ancestors, at the men and women who had carved out this Eden from the raw wilderness.
The fires of war were burning brightly in his Eden.
He turned and walked again. Lewis would be awaiting him and his men. They had to break the British menace, and he had to return to Washington soon. The Congress was meeting; any day the colonies would declare for freedom.
And he would risk all in that struggle.
But he would not lose! he swore, and he paused, looking back to the bedroom. Poignant, wistful pain swept into his heart. If only she were with them!
If only she did love him.
In the gallery he stared at the portraits. Theirs were the last ones. Her hair was swept up in ringlets and fashionable curls, her beautiful eyes had been caught in all the majesty of their color. Her smile was one that could make a man willing to die in any manner for a mere whisper from her lips.
He was beside her, in the very uniform he wore now.
Lord and Lady Cameron of Cameron Hall, one of the finest properties in Tidewater Virginia! he thought with some bitter irony. They graced the gallery as finely as any of his illustrious ancestors, when they might well be the very fall of the house. Was he the first Cameron to sell his soul for love, his birthright for some vague dream of new country?
Amanda …
He had not left the house, and already his blood warmed and his muscles tensed and tightened when he thought her name and conjured before his eyes a vision of the woman he had left behind. He was tempted to turn back, but he could not. There were battles to be waged. In Philadelphia men were busy writing the words for the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson was drafting the document, he had heard. The Virginians were very proud of that fact, just as they were proud that many of the ideas were coming from words penned for Virginia by George Mason.
The British would hang him, he thought, if they ever got their hands upon him. Dunmore, his old friend, would hang him higher than any other.
He looked up at the portraits again and smiled wryly. “What do you say, monsieurs? Am I a fool? Casting this heritage to the winds of war?” Perhaps not, he thought, his smile deepening. His forebears had left behind a safe and guarded world to strike out into a wilderness. They would understand that he gambled all in a dream of liberty and honor. Even if his wife did not.
He turned, fighting the urge to go back to touch her just once again. He left the portraits behind and hurried down the stairs. Cassidy waited for him at the front door, holding his mount.
“There’s a flagon of whiskey in your saddlebag,” Cassidy told him.
“For breakfast, eh, Cassidy?”
Cassidy grinned. “Thought you might be needing it.”
Eric agreed. “Aye, that I might. But I’ll have to get the troops moving first. Wouldn’t do to show them a drunken example, eh, Cassidy?”
“No, sir, it wouldn’t do at all.”
Eric mounted upon his horse and looked down to Cassidy. “You’ll go with her to France?”
“Wherever you send me, milord, I will go.”
Eric stretched out his hand and took Cassidy’s dark one. “Thank you. And Pierre. And see that Jacques sails with her too; that is very important. He will let no harm come to her.”
Cassidy nodded. “Jacques will guard her with his life. His loyalty to her is deep seated.”
“It should be,” Eric murmured.
“Milord?”
He hesitated, looking down at Cassidy. “I believe that she is his daughter,” he said quietly, then grinned at Cassidy’s dumbfounded expression. “Say nothing.”
“No!” Cassidy agreed. “You mean Lord Sterling—”
“Is a monster,” Eric agreed, but said nothing more on the subject. If there was a God, and if there were a multitude of battles, surely Sterling would be taken home to his eternal rest before it was all over. “I will come as soon as I can. God alone knows when that will be. If I am killed—”
“Lord Cameron, please!”
He waved a hand impatiently in the air. “It is only a matter of time before independence and war are proclaimed. Virginia will set herself free before the others, I believe. Death is a fact of life, and very much one of war. If I am killed, care for my lady still, Cassidy, for I love her.”
“Always, milord,” Cassidy assured him, his dark eyes grave and misted.
Eric saluted quickly and rode away toward the fields where the troops were encamped.
He did not turn to look back at the house.
He did not dare. If he saw her face in the window, he would not be able to ride away.
XVI
During the first few days of July, Andrew Lewis took command of the troops gathered on the mainland elevation that fronted Gwynn’s Island, where Dunmore had brought his fleet. Charles Lee had reported him as living caterpillarlike off of the land, stripping it bare, taking everything.
Lewis fired the first shot himself.
It was later reported that the first cannon shot ripped into the governor’s cabin, the second killed three of his crew, and the third wounded Dunmore in the leg and brought his china crashing down upon him.
It was a complete rout. Those who could do so fled. Eric wondered briefly if either Nigel Sterling or Robert Tarryton had been killed or wounded in the fray, but there was no way of knowing. Nor did it matter, he tried to tell himself. The threat was gone.
Or was it?
By night he often lay awake, and when he slept, he kept remembering Amanda’s face and her eyes, and her whispered, desperate words of innocence. She entered into his dreams, and she tortured him. His anger had kept him from listening to her, but now, with Dunmore far from Virginia shores, he wondered if he shouldn’t have listened.
News arrived from South Carolina that was exciting and uplifting to the colonial soldiers—Admiral Sir Peter Parker’s squadron had attacked the palmetto-log fortification on Sullivan’s Island, the key to the harbor defenses at Charleston. Under Colonel William Moultrie, amazing damage was done to the British fleet. The ships limped away, with British general Sir Henry Clinton determined to rejoin Howe at New York.
With Dunmore bested, Eric was due to return to Washington’s side, but he decided to return home instead. There was a slight possibility that Amanda had not sailed as yet. And he was suddenly eager to listen to her again. Desperate. He had said horrible things to her,
made horrible accusations, and many had been driven by simple fear and fury.
He rode hard, leaving Frederick in the dust. But when he reached the long drive to the house, his heart sank. Beyond the rise he could see that the Good Earth was no longer at her berth; Amanda had indeed sailed.
He reached the house and threw open the door anyway, but only Richard and the maids were there to greet him. The house seemed cold and empty in the dead heat of July. He slowly climbed the steps to the gallery, and he felt the emptiness close around him. She had come to be so much a part of the house. The scent of her perfume remained to haunt him, almost like an echo of her voice, a sweet and feminine whisper that taunted and teased. It was best! In France she would be safe—and the colonies would be safe from her!
No words, no logic, mattered. His world was cold, his house was nothing but masonry and brick and wood without her.
“Lord Cameron!”
He swung around and looked down the stairs. Frederick had come bursting into the room. “Lord Cameron! Independence! The Congress has called for independence! A declaration was read in Philadelphia on the sixth day of July, and it’s beginning to appear in the newspapers all over the country! Lord Cameron, we’ve done it! We’ve all done it! We’re free and independent men!”
Aye, they had done it. Eric’s fingers wound around the railing of the gallery balcony as he stared down at the printer. They’d already been fighting over a year, but now it was official. They could never go back now. Never.
They were free.
A fierce trembling shook through him. He was suddenly glad that he had heard it here, in Cameron Hall. Despite the emptiness. He knew again what was so worth fighting for, worth dying for.
He hurried down the stairs. “Richard! Brandy, man, the best in the house! The Congress has acted at last! My God, get the servants, get everyone. A toast! To … freedom!”
Worth fighting for …
By the time Eric returned to New York and Washington’s side, he had come to realize just what the words meant. The British commander Howe had already landed 32,000 troops on Staten Island. Half of the Continental Army of 13,000, under General Putnam, was sent across Long Island. The remaining half remained on Manhattan.
The Battle of Long Island took place on August 27. Howe landed 20,000 of his troops on Long Island between the twenty-second and twenty-fifth of the month, then turned Putnam’s left flank.
Eric rode back and forth between the divisions with intelligence and information. He had never so admired Washington as he did when the general determined to evacuate Long Island. The brilliant operation took place between the twenty-ninth and thirtieth.
It was a bitter fall. In early September, Sergeant Ezra Lee attacked the British fleet in the American Turtle—a one-man submarine created by David Bushnell. The operation was mainly unsuccessful, but the Turtle created tremendous alarm and gave a burst of amusement and renewed vigor to the American forces.
But from there, things became ever more grim. On September 12 the Americans decided to abandon New York. On the fifteenth, American troops fled as the British assaulted them across the East River from Brooklyn. On the sixteenth, at the Battle of Harlem Heights, although Washington managed to slow Howe, Washington’s communications were threatened, and he was forced to pull back.
Eric was in George’s tent at the end of the month poring over maps of New York and New Jersey when a message arrived. He watched the general’s face, then he saw the shoulders of his giant friend slump and his face turn ashen. “They have caught my young spy,” he said.
Eric thought back quickly. Washington had asked a highly respected group from Connecticut, the Rangers, to supply a man to stay in New York to obtain information on the Brits’ position. A young man named Nathan Hale had volunteered on the second call, and he had gone in pretending to be a Dutch schoolmaster.
Washington rubbed his temple fiercely. “He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. He was betrayed. Howe condemned him to hang.” He exhaled on a long note, looking at his sheet of correspondence again. “He gave a speech that impressed them all, ending it like this—listen, Eric, it’s amazing—‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.’ One life. My God.”
“It is war,” Eric said quietly after a moment.
“It is war. We will lose many more,” Washington admitted. “But this young Hale … that such courage should be cruelly snuffed from life!”
Cruel, yes, Eric thought, riding with his troops the next day. Cruel, but something more. Nathan Hale’s words were being whispered and shouted by all men. In death Nathan Hale had given an army an inspiration. He had gained immortality.
By night the smell of powder seemed to penetrate Eric’s dreams. With his eyes opened or closed, he saw lines and lines of men, heard the screams of men and horses alike, saw the burst of cannon and heard its terrible roar. But sometimes, when the black powder faded, he would see Amanda. And she would be walking toward him through the mist and death and carnage, and her eyes would be liquid with recrimination.
They had hanged Hale, the British. Traitors are usually hanged, and that is the way that war goes.
But what if she hadn’t lied? What if her days as spy had ended? What if someone else played them all false?
Groaning, he would awaken. And with his eyes open to the dawn, he knew that he would ride and fight again—and lead men unto death.
On October 28 they fought the Battle of White Plains. The Americans fought bravely and valiantly, and with a startling skill and determination. Eventually the British regulars drove them off the field. Waving his blood-soaked sword in the air, Eric shouted the order to retreat to the men under his command.
Anne Marie and Sir Thomas were often his consolation then. Anne Marie continued to follow her father to war. On the field she loaded weapons, supplied water, and tended to the wounded. When conditions permitted, Eric ate with the two, and when the meal was over, he would often sit with Anne Marie. One night, as they walked beneath the trees, she turned into his arms. She rose up on her toes and kissed him. He responded, as he had before, his heart hammering, his body quickening. She drew his hand to her breast, and he touched her softness, but then he folded her hands together, drew away from her her, and gently touched her cheek. “I’m a married man, Anne Marie. And you are too fine a woman to be any man’s mistress.”
“What if I do not care?” she whispered.
He exhaled slowly and felt her eyes upon him in the darkness.
She smiled. “I am too late, Lord Cameron, so it seems.” She teased him, her smile gentle. “When you were wild and reckless and seemed to collect women, I was seeking a ring about my finger. And now I would have nothing more but a few nights with a hero in my bed, and it really wouldn’t matter if I were the most practiced whore on the continent. Eric, go after your wife. Bring her home. I do not believe that she would have betrayed you so completely.”
He folded her hands together. “Anne Marie, I cannot. Perhaps I should not come anymore—”
She pressed her fìnger to his lips. “No. Don’t take away your friendship. I need you and Damien.”
“Ah! My bloodthirsty young cousin-in-law. He is still scarcely speaking to me; he does so under orders only. But he is a fine young man—”
“And in love, didn’t you know?”
“No, I did not,” Eric told her.
Anne Marie dimpled prettily. “With Lady Geneva. I suppose it began long ago in Williamsburg. Now he pines for her when he cannot travel south. I believe she will come north to be with him.”
“Really? Geneva does love her comforts.”
“You know her so well?”
“I did,” he murmured. “Well, perhaps she has caught patriot’s fever herself. Only time will tell.”
“Only time.” Anne Marie kissed him chastely upon the cheek. “Go for your wife, Eric.”
“I cannot,” he said, and in such a manner that she knew their talk had come to the end. She saw the twist
of his jaw and the ice in his eyes, and she fell silent.
In November Fort Washington, on northern Manhattan overlooking the Hudson, fell. Twenty-eight hundred Americans were captured. And the Americans were forced to evacuate Fort Lee, in New Jersey, with the loss of much badly needed material.
The Americans began their retreat into New Jersey, southward. Charles Lee was left behind to cover the retreat. He and four thousand men were captured near Morristown.
Washington paled at the news. Furious, he refrained from swearing. He led the remaining three thousand men of the Continental Army southward and crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania. Congress fled from Philadelphia to Baltimore, and Washington was given dictatorial powers.
Eric changed into buckskins and slipped behind the lines to discover the British position. He kept remembering Nathan Hale, and he prayed that he could be as heroic as the younger man should he be captured. The British would dance at his hanging, he was certain.
But he was able to gain information easily enough. Howe, confident of a quick final victory in the spring, had gone into winter quarters, the bulk of his men in New York and southern New Jersey.
As Christmas neared, Eric sat with other commanders and watched as Washington paced the ground and pointed at the maps. “We are desperate, gentlemen. Desperate. Our army has been sheared to threads, those men who remain with me talk constantly of the fact that their enlistment periods are up. Now, I have a plan …”
His plan was risky, desperate, dangerous—and brilliant, Eric thought. On Christmas night they recrossed the Delaware, nine miles north of Trenton, with 2,400 men, during a snowstorm. The cold was bitter, the wind was horrid, the water was ice. Eric felt his face chafed, he felt the numbing sting as the water rose from the tempest-tossed river in a spray to strike him. But in the pale light ahead he saw Washington standing at the bow of his boat. All of the men saw him. They crossed in safely.
At dawn they fell on the Hessian garrison at Trenton.
Victory was complete. Drunk, stunned, and hungover, the mercenaries fighting for the British tried to rise from their beds, but the colonials were all over them. Eric had little need to shout orders, for his troops moved with swift efficiency, and the attack was a complete surprise. When it was all over, of fourteen hundred Hessians, a thousand had been captured, thirty had been killed, and the Americans had lost only two men frozen to death and five wounded. Most important, perhaps, was the booty they captured, a good supply of small arms, cannon, and other munitions.